Mike Easton Scouting Bigger Space for Il Corvo

Seattle's Hill Climb pasta pro Mike Easton thinks he's found a new space for his ultra-popular, but closet-sized lunch spot, Il Corvo. Sharing space with Procopio for the past year-and-a-half, Easton says it hasn't been ideal on several levels. "We only get partial kitchen access--we can only use the kitchen until 11 a.m. every day, and because of space-related issues, we can't be making pasta when we're open."

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Regardless, Easton is very grateful to owner Brian Garrity. "I have a good relationship with Brian here, and as long as I wanted to stay here he'd be fine, but there's no way for me to really grow in any way if I continue staying at this location--not to mention being able to do anything like extra dinners and stuff like that."

To clarify, this would not be a second location; it would be the only location for Il Corvo. "We have an offer in on a really beautiful space down in Pioneer Square that we really like."

If Easton gets the space, which he could find out as early as today, it will be two levels and about 1,600 square-feet. As for quality control in a larger space, Easton isn't sweating it.

"No. I'm not worried about it at all because I will still be personally overseeing every aspect of everything. I would sooner spit in someone's face than serve them a sub-par bowl of pasta. I may just have a few more employees helping the line go smoothly during the day."

A new larger spot would also mean that Easton could stay open later.

"We have plans to do what I said we were going to do in the beginning, which is have pasta available for people to pick up and buy retail and take home. And for that, I really feel like we need to be open until 5 or 6 p.m. to give people an opportunity to swing by after work and pick up dinner."

And if there was any question, he's keeping the name.

"I thought a lot about changing the name because to me Il Corvo is this entity here [at Procopio] and is just a very specific core key lunch entity, so I did think about changing the name. But after much deliberation we just decided it's too valuable of branding to change at this point. So, yeah, it still will be called Il Corvo."